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Overview

Surrounded by potential enemies, Hannah McGarry faces the mystery of her husband's suspicious death, the prospect of bankruptcy ... and the disappearance of the fabulous Black Trinity necklace that was to be her financial security. Desperate, she calls Archer Donovan, a silent partner in Pearl Cove, her late husband's pearl farm venture. He might help her ... if the price is right.

About the Author

New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Lowell has more than eighty titles published to date with over twenty-four million copies of her books in print. She lives in the Sierra Nevada Mountains with her husband, with whom she writes novels under a pseudonym. Her favorite activity is exploring the Western United States to find the landscapes that speak to her soul and inspire her writing.

Date of Birth:

April 5, 1944

Place of Birth:

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Education:

B. A., University of California, 1966

Read an Excerpt

Pearl Cove

Like grains of sand grinding inside the oyster,

Like pearls being formed from the grains;

Still waiting, though in unbearable patience

Still believing, though almost in disbelief.

-Zhou Liangpei

Seattle, Washington

November

Archer Donovan wasn′t easily surprised. It was a hangover from his previous line of work when surprised men often ended up dead. Yet the unique, peacock-and-rainbow radiance of the teardrop black pearl Teddy Yamagata was holding out did more than surprise Archer. It shocked him. He hadn′t seen a black pearl with such colour for seven years.

That particular pearl had been clutched in a dead man′s hand. Or nearly dead. Archer had fought his way through the riot in time to pull his half brother out of the mess and get him to a hospital in another, safer place.

Long ago, far away, in another country.

Thank God.

Archer had done everything in his power to bury that part of his past. Years later he still was shovelling. But he had learned the hard way that no matter how determined he was, his previous undercover life had a nasty habit of popping up and casting shadows on his present civilian life. The proof of it was gleaming on the palm of Hawaii′s foremost pearl collector and trader.

Teddy wasn′t in Hawaii now. He had flown to Seattle with a case full of special pearls to show Archer. The extraordinary black pearl was one of them.

"Unusual colour," Archer said neutrally.

Peering through the thick, blended lenses of his glasses, Teddy measured the expression of the man who was a sometime competitor in the pearl trade, an occasional client, and an invariably reliable appraiser. If Archer was particularly interested in the tear-shaped black pearl, nothing showed on his face. He could have been looking at a picture of Teddy′s grandchildren.

"You must be a helluva poker player," Teddy said.

"Are we playing. poker?"

"You′ve got your game face on. At least I think you do. Hard to tell under all that fur."

Absently Archer rubbed his hand against his cheek. He had given up shaving several months ago. He still wasn′t quite certain why. One morning he just had picked up his razor, looked at it as though it was a remnant of the Spanish Inquisition, and dropped the blade in the trash. The fact that it was six years to the day since he had quit working for Uncle Sam might have had something to do with it. Whatever, his beard had grown into a short black continuation of his short black hair.

And if there were a few grey hairs among the black, tough. The dead didn′t age. Only the living did.

"Must be hot when you go to Tahiti," Teddy said.

"It′s always hot there.

"I meant the beard."

"I never sent it to Tahiti."

Teddy abandoned subtlety and tried the in-your-face approach. "What do you think of the pearl?"

"Whatever you can get for it." Archer′s cool, graygreen glance stopped Teddy′s immediate protest. "What do you really want to know?"

"What the damn thing′s worth," he said, exasperated. "You′re the best, most honest judge of pearls that I know."

"Where did you get it?"

"From a man who got it from a woman who got it from a man in Kowloon, who supposedly got it from someone in Tahiti. I′ve looked for that man for six months." Teddy shook his head emphatically. "He′s not there. But if you buy the pearl, I′ll give you the names.

"Are there more?"

"I was hoping you could tell me."

"I′ll bet you were."

Archer looked at the stainless steel space-age clock his father had brought back from Germany and placed in the front room of the series of suites that were the Donovan family residence in downtown Seattle.

Two o′clock in Seattle. Wednesday afternoon. Autumn closing in on winter.

Where the black pearl had come from, it was early morning. Thursday. Spring closing in on summer.

What went wrong, Len? Archer asked silently. Why, after seven years, are you selling your unique Pearl Cove gems?

He looked at the radiant black gem, but it had no answers for him except the one he already knew - seven years ago, his half brother, Len McGarry, had mixed the undercover life with one too many shady deals. It had nearly killed him. It had certainly maimed him.

Archer was one of three people on earth who knew that Len had discovered the secret of how to culture extraordinary black pearls from Australia′s South Sea oysters. But Len had refused to sell even one of the thousands upon thousands of black gems Pearl Cove must have produced in seven years.

Yet here was one of those gems: beautiful black ghost of the past.

Part of Archer, the part that stubbornly refused to bow to bleak reality, whispered that maybe Teddy′s pearl was a sign that something had gone right, not wrong. Maybe Len was finally healing in his mind, if not his body. Maybe he was beginning to understand that no matter how many glorious South Sea pearls he hoarded, he was still the same man.

Linked with the thought of Len came unwelcome memories of Hannah McGarry, Len′s once innocent, always alluring wife. Alluring to Archer, at least. Too much so. He had seen her only twice in ten years. He could recall each moment with brutal clarity.

She was like the black pearl, unique. And like the pearl, she hadn′t the least idea of her own beauty, her own worth.

When he had showed up with her broken, bleeding husband in his arms and told her she had two minutes to pack, she didn′t faint or argue. She simply grabbed blankets, medicine, and her purse. It had taken less than ninety seconds. Their flight out of hell had taken a lot longer...

Table of Contents

Editorial Reviews

The Barnes & Noble ReviewElizabeth Lowell delighted readers with her first two sagas about the high-powered, Seattle-based Donovan family, Jade Island and Amber Beach, both of which became instant New York Times bestsellers. Now comes Pearl Cove, the third in this series about a family of international gem traders, this time featuring the aloof, mysterious, and seemingly self-contained eldest Donovan son, Archer.

Archer Donovan is the eldest son in the powerful, gem-dealing Donovan family. Like his siblings, Archer is something of an expert when it comes to precious stones, but until recently he made his living doing covert operations for Uncle Sam. It was during one such job that Archer discovered he had a half brother in the same business  Len McGarry, the result of a dalliance Archer's father had as a teenager. No sooner did Archer find Len then he very nearly lost him, when an assignment went horribly wrong and nearly cost Len his life. Archer was able to save him, but injuries condemned Len to a life as a bitter and mean-spirited paraplegic. In the process of rescuing Len, Archer met and fell in love with Hannah, Len's wife, a fact Archer worked hard to hide. But Len caught on anyway and banished Archer from his life, though not before giving him half ownership in a pearl farm Len owned  a gesture of gratitude for saving his life.

As a silent partner in the pearl farm, Archer has little to do with it until he is awakened in the middle of the night 10 years later by a frantic yet wary phone call from Hannah informing him that Len is dead. While it appears that Lendiedfrom injuries sustained in a recent cyclone that struck Pearl Cove, Hannah is certain he was murdered by someone who was after Len's prized collection of black rainbow pearls. Most of the pearls are missing, including the prize of Len's collection, the Black Trinity, an exquisite three-strand necklace of black pearls. While Pearl Cove is suffering financial difficulties, Len's secret for creating the one-of-a-kind black pearls which gleam beneath their lustrous surface with every color of the rainbow, is worth billions of dollars. And there are plenty of interested parties who want to get that secret: the Aussies, the Chinese, the Japanese...even Uncle Sam himself.

It doesn't take long for Archer and Hannah to confirm that Len's death was no accident, and that Hannah is likely the next victim in line. Along with trying to find out where the missing pearls might be and who the killer is, Archer is forced to deal with his feelings for Hannah, which are more intense than ever. Hannah is also attracted to Archer, but she has spent too many years trapped inside the bitter marriage she had with Len. With each cautious step they take, they draw closer to discovering the missing jewels, Len's murderer, and the love they feel for one another.

With appearances from characters who were featured in the first two books in the Donovan series, Pearl Cove is a steamy tale of keen suspense and high intrigue, anchored by a delicious sense of intimacy and continuity with the main characters. There is still one more Donovan offspring whose story Lowell has yet to tell: Faith, the Donovan boys' sister. If the first three books in this series are any indication, the fourth promises to be a true gem.

 Beth Amos

Formulaic but fun, Lowell's latest romantic suspense novel returns to the glamorous Donovan family she created in Amber Beach and Jade Island. When wheelchair-bound pearl harvester Len McGarry turns up dead on an Australian beach with an oyster shell sticking out of his chest, his beautiful widow, Hannah, knows that Len was murdered for his $3 million rainbow pearl necklace, the Black Trinity, now missing. Feeling herself in danger, Hannah seeks help from Len's partner and half-brother, the ruthless but hunky Archer Donovan. Archer fell for Hannah 10 years ago, when she was Len's teenage bride, and he's only too happy to help her track down both Len's killer and the necklace. Archer uses his family's resources, his inside knowledge of the pearl trade and his U.S. government connections to find the (rather predictable) bad guys. True love turns out to be harder to locate. As soon as they fall into bed, Archer knows he wants Hannah to have his baby. But Len was a cruel, unworthy husband, and Hannah, still recovering from her marriage, has trouble committing to Archer. Lowell uses the double search as backdrop for the push-and-pull between a reticent heroine and an oddly insistent, "elementally masculine" hero. Neither her plotting nor her airy prose take the romance genre anywhere new. Lowell does, however, infuse the minutiae of pearl diving and of international gem sales into a racy light read. (June) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

More love and intrigue with the Donovans of Amber Beach fame.

Library Journal

In her third steamy romance about the gem-dealing Donovans (Amber Beach, 1997, etc.), Lowell joins Nora Roberts in the celebration of lusty heroes with large, loving families. Archer, the eldest of the Donovans, is a pearl lover and former government operative. Though he has forsaken the terrible loneliness of trouble-shooting for "Uncle" and gone to work in the mineral import-export business of his family, he hasn't forgotten his deadly skills or lost his hair-trigger reflexes. Which is all to the good when Hannah McGarry, the widow of his half-brother Len, involves him in the search for a priceless set of pearls that has become implicated variously in the shadowy interests of the Chinese, Australian, and US governments. After Len is murdered at his Australian pearl farm, Hannah sends for Archer because her own life is in danger. Len, it seems, was a ruthless, obsessed fellow who had developed a priceless black pearl, and now the major pearl interests believe that Hannah knows its secret formula, though in truth Len never told her any part of his culturing methods. A bitter paraplegic, he merely exploited her genius for sorting pearls and withheld his love. Hannah now makes the mistake of believing that Archer is the same species of ruthless tough guy that Len was. While Archer can be as ruthless as he has to be, underneath those hard muscles and behind that hairy chest, he's just a love-hungry teddy bear who has always had the hots for Hannah. As Lowell interweaves Hannah and Archer's romantic tussle with a virtual handbook of pearl culturing, buying, history, and lore, Archer sneaks the voluptuous Hannah out of Australia and back to the protection of his family home in Seattle.Supported by the Donovans, the pair vanquish the bad guys along with all the barriers to marriage and babies. Strong, interesting, and sexy charactersand, happily for lovers of romance and priceless jewels, there are still three Donovan siblings to go. ($150,000 ad/promo)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

I fell in-love with Archer's character right away when I read Amber Beach and Jade Island. I could not put the book down and read it over and over again. I just wish that Ms. Lowell will feature their baby boy in the following stories and the stories of the rest of the Donovans especially the twins Justin and Lawe...and of course The Donovan and Susa's story.

Guest

More than 1 year ago

I love this book I'm glad I bought it so I can read it over and over

TheBooknerd on LibraryThing

2 days ago

This should have been a good book -- the premise seemed very promising, and the previous Donovan books tempted us with Archer's formidable appeal. Sadly, the actuality did not live up to the anticipation. Indeed, it fell more than a little flat. Overall, this was a very mild, unsurprising story.

lulu150 on LibraryThing

2 days ago

I really enjoyed this book. I thought this one was better then Jade Island and it had been a while since I read Amber Beach. I cannot wait to start reading Midnight in Ruby Bayou.

cindyloumn on LibraryThing

3 months ago

Like it. But the sex was over written. went on and on. But good story line!1/28/00

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

I have been reading this for a long time and I read it a few times and I still love! It's so romantic and it's so dramatic!

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

:(

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

maggie70GA

More than 1 year ago

Elizabeth Lowell always packs a punch. The books of the Donovan series can be read separately, but for full enjoyment..read the complete series. ENJOY!

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

DBM50

More than 1 year ago

I love the Donovans series. All the eries was very good and exciting. Highly recommend.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

I almost didn't finish, it started slow, but then it gained my attention. I'm glad I presevered, it was really an interesting story, with just the right amount of who done it. Through fear and misunderstanding all came out right for the main characters. You really learn lots about the pearl trade.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

bkelly

More than 1 year ago

with the twists and turns, the good guy's were bad some times, the the bad guy's were good, a good education and on the different cultures. It changed my out look on sexual items made,because of how I looked at them, thru her writing.